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Hi everyone. I just bought an Optoma HD65 from ebay. In testing it out, everything seems fine except for one thing, I am seeing some pink blotchiness in skin areas. It's really annoying. I'm hoping it's just a setting I can adjust, or a scaling issue I can fix. I did not notice it on a quick look at a Bluray DVD, did not notice it when I was streaming "Flight" via Amazon. The place where I noticed it the most was in watching Big Brother from CBS via DirecTV. I know CBS is 1080i, is it a scaling issue to this 720p projector? I did try changing the output resolution on the H24 DirecTV receiver, but it did not seem to affect it at all. I checked all the projector setting I could think of and everything looks like it's standard. When I turn the contrast way down that does lessen it a lot, but then the picture looks bad. I did take a picture to try and show the issue, and I'm attaching it. I think you can see it, but it's much worse when watching it. Someone will have tanned skin, but a whole patch will turn to pink. If you look at her forehead and the middle of her chest you will see it there.

Can anyone tell me what might be causing this? I'm hoping the projector is not a dud. Thanks!

It looks like a white-balance issue. Go into the menu or advanced menu (further inside the regular menu..nothing tricky) and see if you can find something that looks related to white or balance or RGB. If settings in there are near the middle it's probably alright, but extreme settings often cause issues like you're seeing.

The other main culprit is running out of peak-white by turning contrast too high. This would cause the problem to suddenly go away once contrast is lowered, but it sounds like you've tried that and it didn't completely eliminate the problem..so that's probably not the case.

The other option is, as you mentioned, a bad broadcast. See how the show looks on your TV , especially if you can watch both at once or TiVo pause.

If you can connect a computer to your projector (especially if you're watching cable through hdmi) try doing that and looking up some pictures showing a black-to-white gradient (a bar of greys changing gradually from dark to white).

Also check for color management or CMS and make sure nothing is set too far from center in there if possible.

Thanks for your reply. The show I was talking about was DVRd, and I watched the same clip on both a 1080i tube TV I have and a 720p LCD, and there was no issues with them at all. This is a very obvious issue, my wife mentioned it right away when we watched it, and she is oblivious to any picture issues. She will be watching shows in SD and not even know it! I will try those suggestions when I get home. I know the contrast level was set at near zero, so turning it way down is not an option.

You mentioned hooking up a computer, and looking at a gradient picture, are there any website with test patterns that can be used to do some simple crude calibration?

Test images are everywhere, but can only be used reliably for brightness, contrast, color, and sharpness. Everything else can only be reliably adjusted using a calibrated meter or occasionally slightly corrected by eye if the values are WAY off.

Sharpness can be adjusted at any time, but the other three should be adjusted in this order: brightness, then contrast (then doublecheck brightness again..then contrast once more), and last adjust color.

Adjusting brightness control affects everything which is why it has to be made right first, contrast can have a small affect on brightness occasionally so it's good to go back and check again..color won't mess up either brightness or contrast so it gets last..sharpness also doesn't mess with any other controls.

If you're interested in getting the most accurate image, turn "brilliantcolor" OFF or as low as possible. This will dim your peak-white down to match your color levels and make certain issues also disappear though maybe not the one you're having trouble with.

Sorry for the delay..I had some really nice, small, simple testpatterns aaaaand I erased them a few weeks ago of course. All these tests will work best in a dark room with the projector sharply focused. Getting these four settings looking right will often make the biggest difference of any setting calibration. It is also recommended that you turn off any spacial features like dynamic contrast, dynamic black, brilliantcolor, real cinema, smooth motion, etc.. as these can make the display more inaccurate and often come with other problems as well.

Brightness:

Contrast:

Color clipping:

Sharpness:

They are fairly strightforward to use.
Brightness can be set low enough that the black surround and one little square on the left is as dark as they get, but also high enough that the next 16-17 don't also look pitch-black. Too high makes black look grey, too low makes the entire image start to turn black.

Contrast is the same thing flipped. Turn contrast low enough that you can see a difference between the white outside edge and the spot to the left of 254. Too high and the whole bar will start to turn white, too low and your brightest whites will be dimmer than they could be.

Color clipping. The color squares should have smaller squares visible inside that get gradually smaller at a regular rate. As you turn Color higher, the bigger squares will start to disappear into the biggest one until eventually the entire thing is just one solid red,green,or blue square.. Turn the color control down until you can see all the smaller ones inside. NOTE: the left side is usually the easier one to judge by..the right side is a little too gradual for many displays under $2000 to easily watch without squinting.

Sharpness should usually be set quite low (often nearly all the way down) and turning it higher will slowly add little white lines near the edges of the black lines in the sharpness patter. Corners can be especially telling. The idea is to have it as high as possible without seeing any little white/light.

All these images can be opened in Paint that comes with windows or any decent picture browser. They are .bmp because the more common jpeg and most others like to "adjust" your colors and tones every time you save or move or upload the image and it's pretty important that the colors and everything stay exactly as they are for obvious reasons.

Thanks very much, there was one setting, that was out to a +6 adjustment that I set back to 0, and that seems to resolve the issue, I think it was the brilliant color setting. Now I just have to work on seeing how I can get the Contrast higher, the picture really seems to be very muddy and lacking in contrast.